Bitcoin-powered cellphones — basically phones that can securely hold and send cryptocurrencies — have long been a fascinating if undeveloped concept in the crypto community. When phones talk to each other using BTC or other currencies — whether it’s to pay bills or send money to friends — you open up an interesting world of commerce. Read More

A week ago, AWS announced that it would soon move to per-second billing for users of its EC2 service. It doesn’t come as a huge surprise, then, that Google today announced a very similar move. Google Compute Engine, Container Engine, Cloud Dataproc and App Engine’s flexible environment virtual machines will now feature per-second billing. Read More

No one would use a secure messaging service like Signal if you couldn’t find out who else was on it — but how can you trust Signal and others not to snoop when you submit your contacts for it to check against its list of users? You shouldn’t have to — it should be impossible. That’s the intention of an update to the app that makes contact discovery even more private. Read More

Twitter for the first time is expanding beyond its 140-character limit, the company announced today. The social network says it will now try out a longer limit of 280 characters in select languages, including English, in order to allow people to share their expanded thoughts without running out of room to tweet. Read More

The upcoming Ataribox retro gaming console will indeed ship with a selection of classic Atari games, as many suspected when the thing was initially announced – but it’ll also have a Linux OS on board and the ability to play games from other platforms, since it’s going to keep the “open” nature of the OS instead of trying to lock it down to Atari content… Read More

Last month, SoftBank, through its massive Vision Fund, led the single biggest private financing round for a healthcare company ever — funneling $1.1 billion into the drug holding outfit Roivant Sciences. Today, the Japanese conglomerate might be regretting that decision. Read More

Google Cloud announced today that it has acquired Bitium, a company that focused on offering enterprise-grade identity management and access tools, such as single-sign on, for cloud-based applications. This will basically help Google better manage enterprise cloud customer implementation across an organization, including doing things like setting security levels and access policies for… Read More

Europe is considering changing its copyright law. At first blush, you might think that this couldn’t possibly affect the way you debate the news of the day online, upload family videos or run your startup. But popular proposals at the EU would strike at the heart of the internet’s openness and accessibility as a platform by raising new barriers to interactive online services… Read More

Uber is planning to cease operations in Québec next month due to some newly proposed regulations by the Ministry of Transportation. Uber’s last day of operations in Quebec will be October 14. Read More

In a post-Juicero world, the bar has been set high for any piece of smart kitchen hardware that only makes one type of food. Enter Yomee, which bills itself as the Keurig of fresh yogurt and is now raising funds on Kickstarter. Lecker Labs, the startup behind Yomee, hopes that its relatively low price (each unit will retail for $99) and cost-savings will let it succeed where Juicero failed. Read More

Dyson, maker of high-tech vacuum cleaners and fans, has long been rumored to be getting into the car game. That’s no longer a rumor, as the company has confirmed that it’s working on a battery electric vehicle with an all-electric drivetrain to be launched by 2020.
The news comes from Dyson founder and CEO James Dyson himself, who announced the project via an internal… Read More

Workplace — Facebook’s bid to take on the Slack, Microsoft and the rest of the players in the market of business chat and collaboration — is getting a big push today by way of a significant customer win. The company has signed on Walmart, the retailing giant and the world’s biggest employer with 2.2 million employees on its books.
Walmart is rolling out Workplace to… Read More

Microsoft Excel users rejoice — your favorite spreadsheet is about to get a lot smarter. Thanks to the help of machine learning and a better connection to the outside world, Excel will soon be able to understand more about your inputs and then pull additional information from the internet as necessary. Read More

Managed by Q, the platform that helps office managers handle day-to-day operations, has made its first acquisition, picking up Y Combinator graduates Hivy for an undisclosed amount.
Managed By Q lets office managers book cleanings, handy work, IT help, and order office supplies thanks to a partnership with Staples. MBQ has raised upwards of $72 million and now serves New York, Chicago, San… Read More

One of the big promises with iOS 11 is ARKit. This new framework makes it much easier to look at virtual objects in the real world using augmented reality. Sketchfab has been building the biggest 3D model sharing platform, a sort of YouTube for 3D models. That’s why today’s iOS update turns Sketchfab into a thorough augmented reality app.
This implementation isn’t perfect… Read More

Alibaba is getting serious about logistics after it agreed to invest RMB 5.3 billion ($807 million) in order to take majority ownership in subsidiary company Cainiao.
Cainiao was created four years ago alongside eight other backers to bring organization in Chinese logistics, particularly around e-commerce deliveries. The company raised its first outside funding in March 2016 —… Read More

Facebook and the NFL this morning announced a new multi-year programming deal that will see the sports organization distributing official NFL video, including game recaps and official highlights, to the social network. According to the NFL, the videos and recaps will be from all 256 regular season games, plus the playoffs and the Super Bowl, and will be made available to Facebook users… Read More

While many folks think of Yelp as a place to find a great place to eat, the company has been quietly infiltrating other categories. Home Services — stuff like plumbing, movers, mechanics, etc. — seem to be a booming business for Yelp, now representing 20 percent of the company’s overall revenue.
So it only makes sense that Yelp has been tailoring features specifically for the… Read More